the passion took possession of me, how it
enthralled my whole nature to the exclusion of
everything but that one tyrannic idea, the
crowning horror that grew out of it might be
understood, if not pitied.

It began innocently enough, God knows. I
went to the house, as I have said, at first in
company with her uncle, then with or without
him, always obtaining a cordial welcome. There
was a goodness, an unaffected kindness in the
little family, manifest in its mutual relations,
its behaviour to friends and visitors, which won
upon me in spite of my distrust, of myself and
others. I had never seen anything like it, never
known how much of affection, of unconscious
self-sacrifice, of mutual esteem and forbearance
might be comprised in the one word home.

They were not brilliant people, nor more
highly bred or educated than thousands of their
class. They read books, went occasionally to
the theatre, loved music, dancing, and innocent
pleasures, and were glad to admit their friends
to a share of them. The father, a cheery,
hospitable man, liked company, and his wife saw
only through his eyes. For a. time, my shyness
kept me in the background, but the unvarying
kindness with which I was received gradually
dissipated my reserve. I loved the family and
felt better and happier for knowing them.

The girls often sang to us of evenings. I
wonder whether I am unusually sensitive to
sweet voices, that hers should have affected me
as it did, waking up some unearthly responsive
longing in my soul as for something I had never
known, something I should never attain, which
was delicious, yet exquisitely painful.

Her girlish ways, her manner as she went
about her household duties or performed the
little rites of hospitality, possessed an
indescribable fascination for me, totally irreconcilable
with reason or with my colder judgment;
for, strange as it may seem, I knew her as she
was, even when most under the influence of the
passion which controlled me. I knew it, but
had no power to break the enchantment.

She never suspected it—- as how should she?
I was so much her elder that she regarded me
as out of the pale of those who might be
attracted by her girlish beauty. To her, a girl
of sixteen, I was an odd-looking man, a visitor,
a friend of the family, nothing more. My
intellectual superiority made her timid. She never
dreamed of her power over me.

The touch of her hand, accidental contact
witli her dress, the upturned glance of her kind
calm eyes, filled me with tremor; my whole
nature became resonant to her presence. When
I conversed, it was always witn a secret hope
that she would listen or reply. I never spoke
to her, without a miserable desire to interest her,
and a wretched sense of failure. I revolved, over
and over again in my mind, the trivial words that
passed between us, pondering on the tones in
which she had spoken, and nursing the unrest
which devoured me like a burning fever.

So it went on, day by day, week after week,
for six months.

There was a handsome lad of fifteen, a
schoolfellow of her brother, who came to the house,
and whose fancy selected her as the object of a
boyish passion: one rife with day-dreams and
romance, but of no more depth or consequence
than such fancies ordinarily are. I noticed it
at the outset. I believe I discovered it before
he himself had any distinct consciousness of the
feeling. When evident to all, and something of
a joke in the family, she was secretly pleased,
though she affected to look down upon him as
her junior—- a year is a great gap in a girl's
estimation. Too simple-hearted to comprehend
coquetry, she yet knew she was pretty, and her
admirer's passion flattered and amused her
innocent vanity. I think she had no idea that
anything serious would come of it, but she certainly
liked and listened to him.

That tortured me. The boy was in earnest.
I have said he was handsome, and the contrast
between his fresh youthful face, his buoyant
spirits and healthy nature, with mine, filled me
with gall and wormwood. He, in spite of his
bashfulness and blushing modesty, could find
topics enough to talk about, and could interest
her. There were no awkward intervals of silence
between them. She smiled or laughed when he
entered the room, and called him " Harry." I
have sat, time after time, and watched them with
unutterable envy and unutterable misery in my
heart. I wonder now, that I restrained myself
so well, but nobody suspected me—- not till the
dreadful end.

The family went out of town, in the month of
June, to a village, eastward of London, on the
border of a forest. They had humble friends
there, and generally stayed at the cottage of a
woman who had been her and her sister's nurse.
And I and the uncle were invited to visit them
at pleasure—- it was barely a three hours' coach
journey. In August, I did so, as it happened,
alone.

I met the father in the footpath across the
meadow which led to the village, on his way to
town, and he—- God help him! I was never
again to see his face turned towards me in
friendship and confidence—- gave me a cheery
greeting, and bade me go on and enjoy myself,
promising to return at nightfall. "The girls
are starting for a pic-nic in the forest," he said;
"you'll be just in time."

I saw her at the window in the cottage gable,
with a garland of summer flowers in ner hair,
laughing through the honeysuckle at those
below. She smiled and nodded a welcome to
me. There were not many present: her brother,
sister, two cousins (girls), a country friend, and
Harry. I knew he was stopping with them,
yet his presence gave me a pang as if my heart
had been suddenly gripped by a cruel human
hand. They all seemed glad to see me, and, my
respects paid to the mother, who did not care to
be of the party, we set out for the forest
together. In spite of his sisters' objections, their
brother took with him a foolish pistol which he
had, for the purpose of shooting at a mark.

Throughout that sultry summer's day, the